The Center, Measured

As some may remember last year I embarked on a new active center channel project. Partly inspired if not suggested by Troel’s Gravesen’s huge and expensive Illuminator Center. I’m pleased with the final results, but since the topic of off-axis response has come up I wanted to share with you what I thought was excellent off-axis performance and the troubles of getting that in a 2-way or center channel speaker.

It’s also important to note that if I had to do this as a passive speaker I would have probably compromised somewhat in the performance in large part because I would not have used 4th order filters, or been able to add some subtle EQ.

Yes, of course it’s easy to criticize the frequency response, but I hope you’ll ignore the foibles and focus not on the on-axis response but on what it takes to get excellent off-axis response as well.

As a speaker builder this is what I shoot for and when I see very expensive multi-way speakers that can’t get there I do have to scratch my head.

I post this in the spirit of discussing pros and cons of design choices. I hope you please keep that in mind. :)